Film

Beyond Evil (1977)

Director: Liliana Cavani

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Cavani's biopic tracing the relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche (Josephson), minor writer Paul Rée (Powell), and Lou Salomé (Sanda), successful novelist and later student of Freud. Its celebration of a 'pure' and passionate friendship committed to Nietzsche's ideas (of a life transcending ethics) is given a handsomed Cinecittà period production. But Cavani's curious dramatic conceit that the writings of the Superman himself can be injected into flesh-and-blood historical characters - as dialogue, as models for outrageous social behaviour - finally ends up as ambiguous, sensationalistic and overblown as its true precursor, Ken Russell's Women in Love, a film to which Beyond Evil, to put it politely, more than pays homage.

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